of an immense territory. Old antipathies, which
had never slumbered, were excited to new and terrible
energy by the combination of stimulants which, in
any other society, would have counteracted each other.
The spirit of Popery and the spirit of Jacobinism,
irreconcilable antagonists every where else, were for
once mingled in an unnatural and portentous union.
Their joint influence produced the third and last
rising up of the aboriginal population against the
colony. The greatgrandsons of the soldiers of
Galmoy and Sarsfield were opposed to the greatgrandsons
of the soldiers of Wolseley and Mitchelburn.
The Celt again looked impatiently for the sails which
were to bring succour from Brest; and the Saxon was
again backed by the whole power of England. Again
the victory remained with the well educated and well
organized minority. But, happily, the vanquished
people found protection in a quarter from which they
would once have had to expect nothing but implacable
severity. By this time the philosophy of the
eighteenth century had purifed English Whiggism from
that deep taint of intolerance which had been contracted
during a long and close alliance with the Puritanism
of the seventeenth century. Enlightened men had
begun to feel that the arguments by which Milton and
Locke, Tillotson and Burnet, had vindicated the rights
of conscience might be urged with not less force in
favour of the Roman Catholic than in favour of the
Independent or the Baptist. The great party which
traces its descent through the Exclusionists up to
the Roundheads continued during thirty years, in spite
of royal frowns and popular clamours, to demand a
share in all the benefits of our free constitution
for those Irish Papists whom the Roundheads and the
Exclusionists had considered merely as beasts of chase
or as beasts of burden. But it will be for some
other historian to relate the vicissitudes of that
great conflict, and the late triumph of reason and
humanity. Unhappily such a historian will have
to relate that the triumph won by such exertions and
by such sacrifices was immediately followed by disappointment;
that it proved far less easy to eradicate evil passions
than to repeal evil laws; and that, long after every
trace of national and religious animosity had been
obliterated from the Statute Book, national and religious
animosities continued to rankle in the bosoms of millions.
May he be able also to relate that wisdom, justice
and time gradually did in Ireland what they had done
in Scotland, and that all the races which inhabit
the British isles were at length indissolubly blended
into one people!